We sometimes experience more than we can say, and often it is the "questions" posed by such nondiscursive reality to which feminist writings speak most profoundly. Feminists should therefore decline Richard Rorty's neopragmatist exhortation to forgo all appeals to "women's experience." Invoking an alternative account of pragmatism's import for feminism, I explore the problematic relationship between the experience of being pregnant and the language we use in talking about it.

Where is the essence of the West in the countries of Europe and America? All these countries have different systems. What is right in one country is wrong in the next; religion, customs, morals — there is no common agreement on any of these. Europe is discussed in a general way; and this sounds splendid. The question remains, however, where in reality does what is called Europe exist? Okakura Kakuzō (1887).